Tag: hair

I’ve been going through a lot of major life changes recently. Moving countries, moving cities within that country, and changing careers. But the biggest change of all has been my hair.

Hear me out, because it’s totally not as weird as it sounds.

Whenever I am in a slump, I start to hate everything about myself. And the easiest place to start in a severe bout of self loathing, is my physical appearance. So it needs to change. From getting a pixie cut on the last day of high school, to dying my hair pink after a breakup, to going back to brown for my move to Madrid – changing my hair is always my first course of action when I feel trapped. And you know what? It works. Changing my hair gives me a fresh outlook on life. Because no longer am I that person I hated just last week. My hair is bouncy and full of life and so am I.

Soon I’ll be starting my new job, which just so happens to be my dream job, and I wanted to go into that stage of my life feeling like a totally new and improved Rosy. So after stalking possibly every hairdresser in Brighton on Instagram, I decided to take the plunge. It took four hours and was the most money I’ve ever spent on my hair, but I have no regrets. It’s short. It’s blonde. I don’t resemble the cousin of Cousin It. I am me again.

Here is why I think changing your hair also changes your life!

1) Briefly, You Are A New Person
For a short period of time after a major haircut, whenever you catch your reflection, you get confused. “Why, who is that dashing young person staring at me?” you say. Well, it’s you! Look at you go! For the first few hours after my haircut, whilst I was painstakingly choosing which selfie would debut my hair on Instagram, I got to thinking (dangerous, I know); is this the same Rosy Parrish as yesterday? This one seemed cooler and more confident somehow. And when I was walking down the street I had to wonder, where the passersby marvelling at how cool that short blonde girl looked? Obviously not. But a girl can dream. So for those brief few hours, I was convinced I was a whole new person. That confidence follows you though, and even now, days later – I still secretly think I’m slightly cooler. Fake it ’til you make it, y’know.

2) Symbolism and Shit
Imagine it. You’re sitting in that chair. The hairdresser is behind you, holding a pair of scissors. Closer and closer they go, until… SNIP. Your hair is gone. Bye bye, hair! Bye bye, problems! When I’m running my fingers through the super short bit on the top of my neck, I like to imagine that along with all the tangles and knots and badly dyed locks, went my worries and problems and a few insecurities too. Swept away by the trainee’s broom. And it feels goooood. I mean, a lot of my problems actually disappeared upon the news of my employment, but that would never happen in a transformation movie montage. It was totally the hair.

3) Feed Your Ego
Unless you’ve accidentally dyed your hair green and come out with an allergic reaction too, your friends are probably gonna gush over your hair a little. Even if you think it’s narcissistic and frivolous, you can’t deny that a quick compliment from someone whose opinion you value will make you smile. I’m not saying cut your hair just for the compliments or the Facebook likes. Cut it for you, duh. But like… it’s an added bonus.

4) It Shows You What’s Really Important
Ignoring everything I’ve said above, it really is just hair. And if your haircut hasn’t come out like you imagined, and you’re screaming “dammit Rosy Parrish, you lied to me” at your screen, take a deep breath and remember you’ll always have number four on this list. Although I am loving my haircut this time round, this is a rarity for me, because most of my trips to the hairdresser end in disaster. Whether it’s a lopsided bob or a really bad dye job, the change is not forever. Your hair can grow, or you can cut it. You can dye it. You can straighten it. You can do that super cool topknot thing that I never truly mastered. Although at its best, our hair can make us feel really great, it also doesn’t define us. It’s all what you make of it. It’s just hair.

And with this wisdom, I bid you adieu. If you’re going through a hard time or just need a change, just start with the hair and the rest will follow. I think this is slightly more manageable advice than my usual spiel of ‘moving abroad cures anxiety’. But hey, they both worked for me

In 2014, I got a little antsy and switched my long blonde hair for a brown bob.

Around the same time in 2015, I took it a step further and lobbed off my hair into a pixie cut.

And in 2016… I didn’t do anything because I’m still living with the consequences of my last major haircut.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my pixie cut grow out story.

May 2015 wasn’t the first time I braved a pixie cut, so I thought I’d be able to handle the change. But this brief stint into pixiedom only lasted two whole cuts. On my second visit to my hairdresser, pleased with how she’d cut my pixie the first time, I asked for it to be slightly shorter. I believe my exact words were ‘the bottom of my ears’ but I guess she heard ‘the top of my ears’ and thus a way shorter pixie than I had anticipated was on my head. Scarred from this traumatic experience, I set out to grow my hair back. And now, in August 2016, I finally feel like I cut my hair this way on purpose rather than looking like I’m growing out a year old mistake.

By August 2015 I felt that only the fringe was growing and not much else. I hadn’t had to face the dreaded mullet cut yet and it could still pass as a relatively cute haircut, even if it was a little bit Early-Years-Justin-Bieber for my liking. However, this was when I realised just how long it would take me to get my old hair back.

In October 2015 I begrudgingly got my first official hair cut of the grow out stage. By this point in time I was already spending my entire life searching Pinterest for ‘how do I grow out a pixie cut please help??????’ and knew that to go longer, you have to go shorter. This annoyed me for 2 reasons: 1) at this stage you’re clinging to every milimetre of hair you own and practically measuring it when you wake up in the morning and 2) paying normal prices for a haircut when the stylist is taking literally less than a cm off the length seems a bit stupid to me, but whatever, I digress. I was relying heavily on hats a lot at this time and doing anything to liven up the emo fringe that was taking up 2/3s of my face.

When December 2015 rolled around I had defeated my first enemy: the emo fringe. It was finally starting to look a little less like a pixie cut, but unfortunately I definitely still looked like someone who was growing out a pixie cut – because no one in their right mind would cut their hair like this. I was trying to kid myself that it looked like a short bob, but it definitely didn’t. My styling technique here was to just tease my layers into every direction imaginable to try and give the illusion of length. It didn’t work.

By March 2016, the unthinkable had happened: it kind-of-maybe-was starting to resemble a bob. A very short, very layered, very shaggy bob – but a bob nonetheless. The month prior to this I had dyed my hair a bronde-y colour to help numb the overbearing feelings of hatred and frustration I felt when I looked at my hair. And yes, that was my first trip to the stylists since my trim the pervious October. I committed the cardinal sin of growing out a pixie: I let myself get a mullet. I’m so sorry. Do as I say, not as I did: cut your hair!

Which brings us to May 2016, a year after the initial cut. I think at this point you actually could consider my hairstyle a bob without lying to yourself. I had passed the point of needing regular trims (needing and actually getting are two different things) and no longer felt the need to inform people that I was growing out a pixie and didn’t willingly choose for my hair to look that way. Some people may say that this 12 month point marks the end of my hair journey, but I disagree. At this point I was relatively happy with the overall length of my hair, but the shortest layers of my original pixie cut still hadn’t fully grown out. I felt like I had two seperate haircuts: a bob and then an even shorter bob sat on top of it.

So here we are at August 2016. It’s taken about fifteen months, but I’m finally happy with my hair and can officially end the pixie grow out saga. I’m still not perfectly satisfied with those pesky layers, but they’re getting there, and the hat can hang out with us until they’re ready to the join the rest of my hair down by my jawline.

I may not have grown out my pixie cut in the most graceful way possible, but it eventually got to where it needed to be. The first eight months or so were the hardest to navigate, but after that I think I finally found my groove. There were definitely moments were I wanted to give up and just accept I’d have to have a pixie cut for the rest of my life, but as long as you keep pushing forward and reminding yourself that it will grown back eventually, growing out a pixie cut isn’t as terrible as it first seems.

Find out what accessory works for you and run with it. I am a hat person, but you might be a scarf of a headband person. Invest in a couple and you won’t hate looking in the mirror so much.

Use this time of having the same haircut for a year to experiment with colour. I’m usually a platinum blonde, so this time I worked my way up from bronde to ash to my usual light blonde. It definitely killed some time.